Welcome back to this multi-part blog series featuring Mike Sabocheck and his efforts to outsmart his local squirrels using SOLIDWORKS xDesign. If you need to catch up, please read the part 1 and part 2 first. In the last blog the original design I came up with needed to be changed based on my wife Tracy’s input. She wanted the feeder support arms to rotate independently from one another and not have them stationary.

At North Design Works there is never really a normal day at the office. At time of writing they’re helping a small software company break through into automotive hardware, whilst separately working with an historic racing car manufacturer to design one of their first new car bodies in years based on sketches of a 1960’s Formula 1 Concept Car. Work-in-Progress Project Car Previous extremes of project randomness include designing sports bras, automotive research in waste heat recovery,

A while ago, I had the honor to be part of something special. It was the launch of a project I have been supporting for a few years, which will be hopefully the start of the largest Ocean cleanup in history: #theoceancleanup. Image source: The Ocean Cleanup I am rooted in the Seas and Oceans Ever since I was a little boy, like my dad and my grandpa before, I liked spending my time on the beaches of the North Sea. Now, as a father of three, I am taking my family to the Netherlands every year (I

Ergonomic products are often designed for adults and while that is already tough enough to perfect, baby products are an even more elusive challenge for many product designers. How would one design products for those who are still learning and refining their motor skills? Monique Filer and Danielle Michaels reimagined every baby product they could think of with SOLIDWORKS On a flight to New Zealand, Dannielle Michaels found changing her newborn’s diaper to be what she describes as “mission

SPOILER ALERT! If you didn’t watch the BattleBots finals this past Friday, you may want to before reading this blog This past Friday night, I watched the BattleBots final four battle it out for the 2018 BattleBots Championship at the WPI University Watch Party supporting Team Bite Force.

I cannot imagine that you are not already aware, but the 2018 Season of BattleBots is coming to an end. The Final Four will be fighting it out this Friday on the Discovery Channel. I know I’m excited, as I have been following this event for many years now, however, this year is especially exciting as we have an ALL-SOLIDWORKS Final four. All four bots were designed using SOLIDWORKS: Lock-Jaw, Bite Force, Whiplash and Minotaur.

What happens when a category 5 hurricane makes landfall where you live? In September 2017, the people of St Thomas and the U.S. Virgin Islands endured such wrath not once but twice in 10 days. As I witnessed three months after the storm, the results were devastating. SOLIDWORKS sponsored an eye-opening documentary video about an organization called Field Ready, a non-profit humanitarian organization that responds to crises worldwide when disaster strikes.

Technology is always moving forward. Computers got faster and smaller throughout the decades to the point where they are now physically impossible to make any faster or smaller due to physics. We have the manufacturing knowledge to do it, but the physical size of an electron is now limiting us from designing smaller or faster CPUs. So in order to continue to improve, we have to change the direction of technology, and that’s fine because we know exactly how to do it – by using the CLOUD.

It’s that time of the year again when we introduce a new release of SOLIDWORKS Composer. We’ve had one full year to improve the product and this time around we had a lot of our multi-year projects come to fruition. The overall theme of this release was to deliver improvements on productivity, integrations with other SOLIDWORKS products and features while also balancing the need to build in the architecture for future improvements. As we do with all SOLIDWORKS products, everything that went into

Welcome to the Born to Design – SOLIDWORKS Podcast. Born to Design takes you inside the most fascinating stories coming out of the design and manufacturing world. You will hear the surprising backstories of amazing creators; harrowing near-failures that became overnight successes;

SOLIDWORKS 2019 contains many exciting improvements and new capabilities that help you design, present, and communicate your ideas faster and easier. Here are some of the key improvements: Create and work with large assemblies much faster. SOLIDWORKS 2019 is significantly faster when working with large assemblies. Whether you’re just viewing your design or adding new components and subassemblies, you’ll notice a significant difference in performance.

The September 2018 upgrade to 3DEXPERIENCE cloud platform brings with it new features and enhancements that are now available to all SOLIDWORKS xDesign users. The xDesign upgrade focused on bringing new features along with several productivity and usability enhancements. Here is the list: 1. All features now support External references.

Collaborating with my wife on this project to defeat the squirrels will be fun. Tracy is a Mac user, and I like using my iPad as much as possible because of its portability and the cool apps so this will test the true cloud capability of xDesign. I feel confident we’ll be able to collaborate and come up with a cool design that not only keeps the squirrels away from the bird feeders but will look really cool on our deck. There are a couple of design requirements I have in mind for the new bird

Designers, suppliers and manufacturers use the 3DEXPERIENCE Marketplace to fulfill orders for new business. Want to join the party? Then join the 3DEXPERIENCE Marketplace. Whether you are seeking bids on your latest design or offering to produce it, you need to know how to connect with new vendors and customers on the 3DEXPERIENCE Marketplace.

Before I begin the real topic of this blog, I like to comment on my journey through CAD technology and what I’ve experienced over the last 40+ years in my career. CAD has come a long, long way in my lifetime. Back in the late 1970’s at Xerox, I was introduced to Computer Graphics or CG as we called it back then. CG ran on terminals hooked up to VAX’s to do 3D design using wireframe techniques.

Have you ever thought about consolidating your product design on SOLIDWORKS, but didn’t because you were intimidated by the idea of migrating all your legacy design data? After all your company has spent a considerable amount—of both money and manhours—creating an enormous amount of product designs so the thought of having to move all of them to a new CAD system, like SOLIDWORKS, can seem overwhelming. So first off, you probably wouldn’t have to migrate as much of that data as you might think.

In order to succeed in the product design industry, you need to have hands-on experience with design software, and rudimentary knowledge of 3D printers, laser cutting, etc. As a graduate student at the Purdue School of Engineering, I was looking for an opportunity to get more hands-on industry experience and started an internship at SOLIDWORKS. My role in Product Management working on the new SOLIDWORKS xDesign includes tasks such as modeling in xDesign, giving feedback on software improvements,

If you are maker, tinkerer, hobbyist or an inventor, chances are you are part of or have heard about FabLab. If you are still curious, a Fab Lab is a community space that provides its members—makers and hobbyists—with off-the-shelf, industrial-grade fabrication tools such as laser cutters, milling machines, scanners, 3D printers and software design tools. It lets them translate their ideas into real products and sometimes create products yet to be envisioned by the established manufacturer. With

It’s been awhile since the last blog and much has been accomplished on the Torpedo. Here’s an update on those accomplishments. If you want to start reading from the beginning, or any of the others you can navigate here: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 I live in a car lover’s Dreamland in Pennsylvania. Every weekend from April to November you can find a car show to attend or cruise at a local ice cream shop during the week to check out cool cars.

Watch as my tiny car sun visor and the earth’s rotation ticked me off so much that it turned into a two-week project and this mediocre blog post. Image of the sun coming through and hitting my face. What’s the hardest part of the transition from being a person who loves to sleep until noon every day to Dassault Systemes’ newest product management intern? I wouldn’t say working 40 hours a week or even waking up early to do so is so unwelcome, but this.

Welcome to SOLIDWORKS Extended Reality (XR) – a method to transform your CAD data and bring it to life, virtually – opening the future of design and engineering. We are now ready for you to test this exciting new export type from SOLIDWORKS CAD, as part of the 2019 Beta Program. This exporter will retain important scene data you’ve created within SOLIDWORKS such as: Geometry & Scene Hierarchy Appearances & Textures Lights and Cameras Exploded Views Motion Study Animations Display States and

The myth of the lone inventor is one of the most pervasive in our culture; it is also one of the most incorrect. Quintessential lone geniuses such as Edison, Einstein and Tesla were far from recluses. Many of their greatest breakthroughs were born of deeply collaborative relationships with other inventive minds.

Additive manufacturing is the way of the future. There are countless reasons why adopting this new technology makes sense, but once you’ve decided to go down that path, there are many options, and so which path do you take? Currently, there are a number of major players all competing to cross the additive manufacturing finish line and be deemed the top player of this $7.3 billion market. They include HP, Formlabs, and Desktop Metal, and each of them have a different strategy.

SOLIDWORKS xDesign Fridays with the Product Definition Team It’s July, and the thermometer has been flirting with +90° temps for the past week here in Waltham. The office environment at SOLIDWORKS is relaxed, which is ideal on hot and humid New England days. When I say relaxed, what I truly mean is you see few suits and ties. Well, one “anonymous” employee typically will wear a suit and a few executives will wear a jacket.